2013 VISION – SEEING DOUBLE and the DEAD a PRELIMINARY AUDIT of ZIMBABWE’S VOTERS’ ROLL by Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit

2013 VISION – SEEING DOUBLE AND THE DEAD A PRELIMINARY AUDIT OF ZIMBABWE’S VOTERS’ ROLL By Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit. 20131 VISION – SEEING DOUBLE AND THE DEAD A PRELIMINARY AUDIT OF ZIMBABWE’S VOTERS’ ROLL By Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit. Introduction. The registration of voters and the compilation and maintenance of an accurate national voters’ roll has been recognized as an essential and key part of the electoral cycle.2 Since the voters' rolls record who may or may not vote, they may ultimately have a determining effect on who wins the poll. Equally importantly, it is imperative that the voters' rolls, being the cornerstone of the administration of a democratic election, be accurate and up to date. While an incomplete voters' roll may disenfranchise those who might otherwise be entitled to vote, an inflated roll containing duplicate entries, names of persons who have emigrated or of dead voters, lends itself to electoral fraud. For if the roll is inflated a false and increased ballot count can be effected (through ballot box stuffing, multiple voting or manipulation of the figures on returns) without appearing blatantly implausible against the number of registered voters. Inaccurate voters' rolls have a knock-on effect on the delimitation of constituencies, portraying an inaccurate number of voters for each area. In a first-past-the-post system, such as that adopted by Zimbabwe for all elections other than the presidential, this assumes increased importance as the number of “wasted votes” may be increased due to wrongfully delimited areas based on a false presentation of the number of voters in a particular area. In the same way, an inflated roll acts as the justification for printing an excessive number of ballot papers, further opening possibilities for electoral fraud. 1 At the time of the signing of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement statements were made to the effect that the new constitutional arrangement was a temporary one. A new constitution was to be drafted following a constitutionally provided timetable, and elections were to be held once the new constitution was in place 18 months later. In fact, there is nothing in the GPA which requires that the transitional arrangement may not last more than two years, and, furthermore, the timetable for the drafting of a new constitution was quietly dropped from constitutional amendment 19 which gave legal force to the GPA. The author’s view is that present indications suggest that the next general elections will be in 2013, rather than 2010. 2 Most recently in Zimbabwe at a conference reviewing the 2008 elections and electoral reform, hosted by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and the Electoral Institute for Southern Africa (EISA) in Victoria Falls in April, 2009. - 2 - Background. The question of the (in)accuracy of the voters’ rolls is a contentious issue and has been raised as a basis for the allegation that successive elections in Zimbabwe do not meet the requirement of being “fair” in accordance with internationally accepted democratic standards.3 All elections from 1985 onwards have been conducted under the auspices of successive electoral supervisory bodies and the same Registrar-General perceived by some observers and opposition candidates to be extremely partisan.4 As a result the voters' rolls, under the control of these bodies, have also been perceived as being deliberately inaccurate and inflated to facilitate manipulation of the vote count. Such criticism has appeared in reports on elections published by NGOs and independent observer groups.5 This suspicion and taint to the claim of a democratic mandate by the winners of the elections could have been, and can be, easily dispelled by an independent audit of the criticized voters' rolls and their subsequent rectification - an exercise made that much easier with the advent of powerful and easily accessible computer technology. It is one which should be welcomed by electoral management bodies and the Registrar-General in the interests of transparency and to support any claim of a fair election. In fact, the contrary has been the case. The Registrar-General has repeatedly hindered people trying to inspect the voters’ rolls.6 This obstructionist attitude has been abetted by supine Electoral Commissions which have done nothing to curb the Registrar-General's behaviour and by successive changes to the Electoral Act designed to reverse the small victories in the courts which facilitated access. It is instructive to track these changes to the legislation as they form a record of deliberately opaque governance and a persistent governmental stance that the voters' rolls should not be subjected to scrutiny by the public. In 2002 the relevant section of the Electoral Act [then Chapter 2:01] section 18 read: 18 (1) The voters roll for every constituency shall be open for inspection by any person, free of charge, at the office of the constituency registrar during office hours. (2) A person inspecting the voters roll for a constituency may, without payment, make copies thereof or extracts there from during office hours. The ability to “make copies” of the rolls was not one with which the Registrar-General was comfortable - particularly as such copies of the rolls that were made exposed defects in the roll. 3 See for example Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Food for Thought – It’s the Count that Counts: Reviewing the Pre-election Period In Zimbabwe March 2005. 4 Ibid. 5 See for example footnote 3 above. 6 See for example EISA Election Mission Report No 28 p 33 which reported on the 2008 “harmonised” elections and presidential run-o ff (the EISA Report). - 3 - Furthermore, following an electoral petition challenging the results of the presidential election, copies that had been obtained of the rolls were used to expose electoral irregularities.7 Clerks within the offices of the Registrar-General were instructed not to allow copies of the roll to be made.8 Since this instruction was in violation of the Act and exposed the Registrar-General to legal action, government proceeded to change the relevant section of the Act. Chapter 2:01 was repealed in its entirety and replaced by Act 25 of 2004, which became Chapter 2:13. The relevant section is now section 21, which provided: 21 (1) The voters roll for every constituency shall be open to inspection by the public, free of charge, at the office of the constituency registrar during office hours. (2) A person inspecting the voters roll for a constituency may, without removing the voters roll, make written notes of anything contained therein during office hours. Accordingly, the right to make copies of the roll was removed, merely allowing a person to make written notes of anything contained therein. All these successive Acts also allowed any person to apply for a copy of a voters' roll for a particular constituency upon payment of a prescribed fee. In 2002 an application was brought before the High Court to compel the Registrar-General to provide the rolls for all constituencies, the common roll, in electronic form. The application was successful.9 As a result the Registrar- General provided a copy of the roll in an electronic format contained on five CD-ROM discs. However, in order to prevent this from happening again, the new Electoral Act of 2004 was amended to make it clear that henceforth only printed copies of the rolls had to be provided by the Registrar-General. The amended section read: 21(4) Any person may, on payment of the prescribed fee, request the Commission to provide him or her with a printed copy of the voters roll for any constituency, and the Commission shall thereupon cause the roll to be printed and provided to that person within a reasonable time. The prescribed fee for the printed roll was always prohibitively high10, though the 2004 Act provided that the cost of a roll should not exceed reasonable costs that might be incurred in its 7 This emerged after a physical inspection of electoral residue from the 2002 presidential poll which was conducted after a series of court cases to compel the same, commencing with Morgan Tsvangirai vs The Registrar-General of Elections (HC 8225/2002) (Guvava J.) 8 Interview by RAU, September 2009 with persons involved in the inspection of the residue. See footnote 7 above. 9 Granted by Adam J – see M. Tsvangirai v Registrar-General and Others HH-29-2002. 10 EISA Report p33. - 4 - preparation.11 However, even this obligation to provide printed copies of the roll was on occasion ignored by the Registrar-General.12 As a result of negotiations between the MDC and ZANU PF in 2007, several legislative amendments were introduced designed to open democratic space in Zimbabwe - which they did to a very limited extent. As part of this process, electoral laws were again changed and several changes were made to section 21 of the Electoral Act, the section which deals with the inspection and provision of copies of the voters' rolls. The new section now provides: 21 Inspection of voters’ rolls and provision of copies (1) Every voters roll shall be a public document and open to inspection by the public, free of charge, during ordinary office hours at the office of the Commission or the constituency registrar where it is kept. (2) A person inspecting the voters roll for a constituency may, without removing the voters roll, make any written notes of anything contained therein during office hours. (3) The Commission shall without delay provide any person who requests it with a copy of the voters roll, upon payment of the prescribed fee: Provided that— (i) the prescribed fee shall not exceed the reasonable cost of preparing the copy; (ii) the Commission may impose reasonable conditions upon the provision of a voters roll in terms of this subsection, to prevent the roll from being used for commercial or other purposes unconnected with an election.

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